Built over decades by a powerful emir in Lebanon’s Chouf Mountains, Beiteddine blends Arab and Italian styles and guards a famed Byzantine mosaic collection.

At the very point where the River Sava flows into the mighty Danube, on a great ridge above the meeting of the waters, stands one of the most fought-over fortresses

On a hill in Belgrade’s Dedinje, the Serbian royal family built two contrasting palaces, a Byzantine-inspired Royal Palace and an English-style White Palace.

Most castles are built with corners: square towers, straight walls, rectangular courtyards. The Castell de Bellver, standing on a wooded hill above the city of Palma on the Spanish island

For more than five centuries the kingdom of Benin, in the forests of what is now southern Nigeria, was one of the great powers of West Africa. Its capital, Benin

In the heart of Bergen, at the edge of a harbour that has bustled with ships for a thousand years, stands one of the oldest and best-preserved fortresses in all

On the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, just beneath the great suspension bridge that now links two continents, stands a palace of gleaming white marble that seems to rise straight

Beyt’ül Hikmet (House of Wisdom) sounds like a dream. No trace is left of this ancient library, which was destroyed in the 13th century. So we are not entirely sure

On a green island in a lake west of modern Stockholm, sheep now graze among grassy mounds where, more than a thousand years ago, one of the busiest marketplaces of

There is a word in English that means smooth, flattering, persuasive talk, the kind that charms and disarms and gently gets its way. That word is blarney, and it comes